"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

No public controversy involving sex is complete until feminist scold Amanda Marcotte makes a fool of herself, and she’s continually striving for ever-lower nadirs of stupidity.

So, a high-school boy in Los Angeles recorded a YouTube video asking famous model/actress Kate Upton to be his prom date. Upton at first indicated on the Today show that she might accept the invitation, but then politely declined. End of story? No, because Amanda Marcotte had not yet made a fool of herself.

The lesson learned: You may be a rich and famous model, but any random man can, just by making a video, force you to do a little song and dance about how delightful his attentions are.
Instead of applauding Davidson for this, adults should be appalled. All that’s been taught here to young men is that they are entitled to women’s attention simply because they ask for it. . . . This entitlement we teach men crops up all the time for women, and it’s rarely as cute as a silly comedy video: When a man demands that you stop on the street to entertain his proposal of going back to his place and then follows you for blocks because you pretended not to hear him. When a rape victim is told that if she didn’t want to have sex, she shouldn’t have gone to the rapist’s hotel room. When a woman files for a restraining order because she’s afraid her abusive husband means it when he says that if he can’t have her, no one can. . . .
[M]en who are violent feel justified because they believe that women owe them their attention, their bodies, and their love. By joining in the collective pressure on Upton to give her attention . . . to a young man just because he wants it, we’re contributing to the overall culture of male entitlement.

Could we unpack the bizarre and tendentious assumptions packed so tightly into Marcotte’s pointy head? Yes, we could.

Friedersdorf’s usual gig is denouncing any successful or influential conservative spokesman — Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, et al. — but he took time out from his assigned duties at The Atlantic to expose Marcotte’s crypto-Marxist idiocy:

Her ideology causes her to write as if she doesn’t understand what is plain to most observers: Kate Upton is far more privileged, powerful, culturally savvy, and capable of fully exercising her autonomy than the vast majority of straight white males in America, and certainly more than a dateless, non-celebrity 18-year-old high school student on YouTube.

Now that Marcotte has jumped the Friedersdorf shark, so to speak, it’s probably safe to objectify Kate Upton again: